30 Days of Dead
It's a Dead Head's most wonderful time of the year! Welcome to another 30 days of unreleased Grateful Dead tracks from the vault, one for every day of the month, selected by archivist and producer David Lemieux. The tracks are yours, 100% free gua-ran-teed, but the real fun is taking part in the challenge for the chance to win some sweet swag from the Dead.
Those of you who know what to do, feel free to skip right on ahead. For those of you who need a refresher, here's the drill:
You know your Ables from your Bakers from your C's, but can your finely tuned ears differentiate the cosmic "comeback" tour from a spacey 70s show? Each day we'll post a song from one of the Dead's coveted shows. Will it be from that magical night at Madison Square Garden in '93 or from way back when they were just starting to warm it up at Winterland? Is that Pigpen's harmonica we hear? Brent on keys? If you think you know, lob your answer in and you just might find yourself taking home our daily prize of a 2025 Grateful Dead wall calendar or the grand prize – a copy of limited, numbered, FRIEND OF THE DEVILS: APRIL '78 boxed set!
Great version of a favorite - may be me, but seems like Phil is turned up in the mix. Either way, he’s on fire here. Thanks for sharing!
There's daytime video footage of this concert on youtube. If anyone needs a link, I will share it. Tomorrow. :) It's historically interesting to see for sure.
Edit: CORRECTION: Never mind. I had the right date and year on the video, but it was the wrong month. I got the guess right, but there's no footage of this which I have found. It's still interesting to see, though.
Very lo-res files, are you going to fix these or is this it for the month? This has happened in other years but after a day or two the lo-res ones were replaced with better files.
I'm nostalgic for BTW, as I'm reminded of hitch-hiking from Red Rocks back to Golden Gate Canyon Campground high in the Rockies, getting a ride into the mountains from a BTW trucker at the junction of Rte 93 and Rte 70. My tour clan was confused as to which vehicle I was going to ride back to camp, and I got left behind. I was wearing bright yellow overalls and a Hog Farm Tie-Dye, long hair and beard, and I was told that I was lucky, hitch-hiking so late in the night post-show, as wolves were recently spotted in the area. And how can I not be reminded of BTW every time I drive through St. Louis crossing the country, which I have done 19 times coast to coast. A most memorable road trip was during a significant snow storm. I pulled into a truck stop to take a break from the difficult conditions, and it was as if I walked into a morgue. Truckers sitting at the counter on their round red naugahyde stools, hands on a cup of coffee, shoulders rounded, staring into nothingness. Apparently a trucker had died that morning in a snow-related accident on I-70. BTW indeed.
Hint: Today's show answer encore was only played twice as an encore according to DeadBase 50, assuming of course I got the correct answer.
If you haven’t already done so, Barlow’s “Mother American Night” is a really good read.